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“We shall be as a city upon a hill. The eyes of all people are upon us.” –John Winthrop

Joe Biden is buying none of this America-as-an-empire-in-terminal-decline meme.  The Washington Post’s E.J. Dionne caught up with the Vice President on Tuesday to discuss the Obama Administration’s economic recovery plan.  Where he got most heated was in [...]

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Byron Wien was amazingly accurate last year in his economic predictions even though his annual list is an attempt to build a non-consensus list of likely outlier events.  So, I was eager to see his 2010 list, which was unveiled earlier today. Please read his list in the post here as background.
Reviewing 2009 predictions
When Wien [...]

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I will have some commentary on this in a future post or an updated version of this one. Update 1600 ET: you can see my commentary in the next post here.
The Surprises of 2010

The United States economy grows at a stronger than expected 5% real rate during the year and the unemployment level drops below [...]

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Below are two videos and an article recounting the recent social unrest in Iran.

Also see Biggest protests in months take place in Iran from the FT

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This comes from Bloomberg News:
Estonia is set to meet its goal of adopting the euro in 2011 because of the Baltic country’s work on fulfilling fiscal requirements, European Union Economic Affairs Commissioner Joaquin Almunia said.
“It is quite possible that Estonia will be in the euro by 2011,” Almunia told the European Parliament in Strasbourg late [...]

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The last I had heard about a prospective Gulf currency union came yesterday morning in a note by Marc Chandler who is the Chief Strategist at Brown Brothers Harriman’s FX group.  He indicated that he was more optimistic about a Gulf currency union on the than a Latin American one on the eve of a [...]

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In the links yesterday, I pointed to an FT article detailing the Austrian government’s nationalization of the insolvent bank Hypo Group Alpe Adria (HGAA). The financial institution, which has 40 billion Euros in assets, is the country’s sixth largest bank. But, in relative terms, this is a very large bankruptcy – using GDP at purchasing [...]

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There will be no Dubai sovereign default. The government of oil-rich Abu Dhabi surprised investors this morning in announcing a $10 billion rescue package to pay for upcoming obligations of embattled Dubai World.
Below Richard Stovin-Bradford of the Financial Times speaks about Abu Dhabi’s decision to finally come to Dubai World’s rescue.  I share his view [...]

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Greece has been downgraded by Fitch Ratings to BBB+ over concerns about its budget deficit. Despite the cut, Fitch maintained a negative outlook on the country’s ratings, meaning it could fall further in the near future.  This action highlights how the real sovereign debt crisis is in Europe not in Dubai.
The ratings agency said:
The downgrade [...]

This post from November 2009 is a reminder of how things looked in the sovereign debt crisis just a few months ago.